Pine Prairie Detention Center reports positive case of coronavirus

A detainee at the Pine Prairie Immigration Detention Center has tested positive for the coronavirus.
The 52-year-old Mexican national, according to a statement from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is showing no symptoms and is quarantined from the general population of nearly 7,000 detainees.
The male subject was transferred to the facility in Pine Prairie from the federal prison in Oakdale after that facility was plagued with 22 positive cases of the coronavirus. Eighteen of those positive cases are inmates, and the other four are staff members. Five deaths have also been reported at the Oakdale facility.
The detainee in question was released by the Bureau of Federal Prisons on March 23 and was transferred to Pine Prairie from Oakdale while, according to ICE Communications Director in the Southeastern United States Bryan Cox, “wearing a mask and gloves and placed in a negative pressure room in Pine Prairie for medical monitoring.”
The detainee was released from Oakdale because he “could not be held at Oakdale past the completion of his prison term” because of “multiple prior felony convictions and prior removals.”
Cox added, “The individual had no contact with detainees at Pine Prairie and was tested out of an abundance of caution.”
“Oakdale has positive cases so we treated the individual from the start as potentially being positive even though asymptomatic,” Cox said further.
ICE has not confirmed any other positive cases in any of its 12 other facilities in the state, however, two other detainees are isolated. One of the two is at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, and the other is at the LaSalle ICE Processing Center in Jena.